I grew up in a TV house. My mom still has a television in each room. We cooked in front of it, ate, cleaned, exercised, had long talks, used it as a light, a nightlight, a friend, and most of all, it was always on in the background.

We currently have 3 TVs. The television has been such a permanent fixture in my life I can’t really imagine it not being there.

Isn’t that the most first world, spoiled sentence you can imagine? It disgusts me to say it out loud. But it’s the cold hard truth.

Since the Occupy Movement began two months ago I have followed it diligently. I genuinely believe it has the potential to grow into something powerful and culture-altering.

But this week I woke up tired.

Tired of reading and anticipating, tired of analyzing, tired of feeling torn between why-care-we’re-all-doomed-anyway and I-better-step-up-and-help-save-the-planet.

I wanted a break.  A break from the news, from the movement, from marketing and discussion and the complete chaos of our political system.

Yesterday, I took that break. Sometimes it is important to change gears — to give your brain a rest so it can re-focus. Right?

All I could think of was sitting on the couch, watching some dumb movie, and eating junk food. I didn’t care what I watched as long as it had absolutely nothing to do with economics or poverty or jobs or culture. Preferably something cheesy, about love or at least, other people’s irrelevant drama.

I just wanted to tune out.

But last night I felt sick. I didn’t spend my day listening to great music. I didn’t cook a great meal or go for a walk. In fact, I didn’t ever consider doing those things. I chose to surround myself with the same product placement and marketing that is at the center of everything making me feel so overwhelmed. And then, I had a quesadilla to wash it down.

As I laid in bed, I started thinking about how much power I was wasting — how much I had already wasted — for me to have “a break”. It’s a question that get’s stuck in my head a lot. Not just the size of my own carbon footprint from running my TV excessively, but the size of the carbon footprint for making TV shows and movies?

Why do I think I need to relax by watching TV anyway? Isn’t it really just pretending everything is okay out there in the world?  Is watching TV my version of denial?

Somewhere along the line I confused taking a break with being mindless and numb.  It’s as though even my breaks have been commoditized and corporatized.

What bothers me most, is that somewhere it became okay for me to feel so frustrated with the system, with capitalism, with corporate indoctrination marketing and yet still go home at the end of the day and spend time with Sony and Samsung and Apex.

It is completely hypocritical.  I can’t argue with that. I don’t need  the TV. It’s a distraction. A habit. A vice. A compulsion.

Somewhere needs and compulsions have gotten far too close for comfort in America.

Our culture has a disconnect between the stuff we use to make our lives easier and the evils that produce it. We are quick to shout judgements about companies, but when it comes down to it are we really ready to give up our most beloved comforts?

I sometimes automatically turn on the TV, even when I know there’s nothing on. We allow ourselves these vices that we have always known just because of just that — we have always known them. Anything else would require effort. I am all for making change as easy as possible, but when it comes down to it, to change the world we have to start with ourselves. At least denial is the first step….or is it the second?

If we want the Occupy Movement to work, if we want change, we are going to have to break down those ideals that have been breed into us. We are going to have to be uncomfortable. We are going to have to change some bad habits.

The ones we don’t recognize are going to be the hardest. For me that’s going to have to start with the Television.

What’s your TV? What’s your vice?

Image: ralphbijker

Over the past month there have been numerous misconceptions about the Occupy Wall Street movement. On TV and on the internet, the world wide protests are portrayed as a bunch of dred-head, bongo-beating folks talking about love with no real focus. The media eats these “first responders” up. They make for great television — dramatic and a little crazy sounding.

To some degree these hippies give us all (the 99%) a bad image — one of drugged out partiers needing an excuse to return to the 1960′s just for the music and clothes.The thing about protests is — especially liberal ones — hippies are the first to show up. They are physically present while the rest of us are eating our five dollar frozen pizzas on the couch watching 30 Rock.

If we want change, real change, we are going to have to put our money where our mouth is….we are going to have to get loud. The voice of the people will have to be louder than the elite and their teams of lawyers, lobbyist, and politicians.

Take a Second, Stop Talking, and Listen

I have seen this picture floating around:

It has created quite the stir both with liberal and conservative groups. The media is eating this shit up. And the picture would be ironic, if the movement were about ending corporations all together.

But it isn’t.

Hear Me: The Occupy Wall Street Movement is NOT Against Corporations

Ok. So there are probably more than a few protesters at Zucotti park who are completely against corporations. But, these people by NO means represent ALL of the crowd. In fact, I don’t even think the represent the majority.

I urge everyone to look past these images you are seeing on television. To look past the drum circles and the dirty hair, the people preaching about love and peace while saying things like “the occasional joint is okay” — look past those people to the other faces in the crowd.

Hear what the people are saying. Hear it and you will get that the point is clear.

The point is clear: We are tired of corporate America controlling our political system and the majority of the countries wealth. There seems to be a misunderstanding somewhere in those words — controlling our political system and the majority of the wealth.

Evening the Score

The LA Times ran this article that says that only 3% of the nation makes over $200,000. That is a shocking number if you consider that the average home costs $246,000 according to the US census.  And, no, I wouldn’t expect for most people to purchase a home outright, but to put a 10% down payment down, you would have to save $20,000 dollars.  That doesn’t seem like an easy feat for an average family who according to the US Census had a “median household income of $49,445 in 2010″.

According to the AFL-CIO website, “in 2010, Standard & Poor’s 500 Index company CEOs received, on average, $11.4 million in total compensation.” Why should the “haves” dominate the political system in the forms of lobbies and complex campaign donations simply because they can afford to do so?

This movement isn’t about getting something for nothing.

It is about choice.

Americans need to be voting with our wallets, choosing products from responsible corporations. Unfortunately, that isn’t always an option. Food, healthcare and shelter — these things come first. If you want all three, sometimes you have to sacrifice quality and corporate responsibility for a product you can afford.

No one is begrudging anyone any success. People who work hard and have an advanced set of skills deserve to be paid more. At the same time, we have to admit that what a CEO does in comparison to what the janitor does, working for the same company, isn’t 230 something times greater.

We are all human. We are all made of blood and bone and skin. If we have learned from our past mistakes we would recognize that valuing one human over another is always a problem.

Yes, more skill should mean more pie. It doesn’t, however, mean take so much pie you will vomit yourself while your brothers and sisters starve. As Professor Elizabeth Warren has explained:

“there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody…Part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” More and more often, that is not occurring, giving the protesters ample reason to take to the streets.” http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/the-99-percent-movement/

This is a just as much a moral movement as it is a political one.

*Image: BlaisOne

Certainly the protestors’ assemblies have appeared unconventional, unorganized and chaotic. Groups have come under a lot of criticism for their decision making. For example, the Occupy Atlanta group was railed in the media for not letting Congressman John Lewis speak at their October 6th rally.

Despite the appearance however, there is a method to the madness. According to a statement on the Occupy Atlanta website:

Anyone may come and speak to or participate in a General Assembly. There is a set order which includes a point where the floor is opened for comments. Anyone present may put their name on the “stack” as it is called and speak. It might seem a simple thing to break the order, but in a large crowd where everyone is supposed to get a chance to be heard, deviating from it quickly causes chaos. Each deviation encourages the next until no conversation can be maintained. All of the speakers who have attended a General Assembly in New York have followed this process. Occupy Atlanta is unaware of any exceptions.

This method is different than what people know. Most events in our daily worlds have a clear organizational structure, with leaders in place to make decisions.

While it might make more sense to the public for Occupy Wall Street Protesters to pick a “spokesperson,” part of the idea – part of the point — is that we need more equality on who gets to talk, and when.

I am seeing a lot of people referring to the Occupy Wall Street protest as the potential start to a “liberal tea party”. It is extremely dangerous to categorize this movement in this way.

First, the tea party is viewed by many as a fringe group that is often viewed as not-so-educated and extreme.

Secondly, by suggesting the Wall Street protesters want another political party misses a LARGE part of what the protest represents: a general disdain for the current political system.

And finally, and most importantly, the Occupy Wall Street Protest is such a broad, all encompassing group that it has the capacity to include both liberal and conservative people. We are both part of the 99%; we are all struggling in our own way.

If Mr. Romney wants to call it “class warfare” (http://ht.ly/6OfXg) — fine. But understand in doing so you ACKNOWLEDGED there is a SEPARATION between yourself and the American citizen. You are confirming that you are above the rest of us.

Do we really want to live this way anymore? Do you really think this 1% is so far superior that they deserve not just a little bit more of the pie, but they deserve almost all of it? If you do, you haven’t spent any time here reading the hundreds of people who are fed up, burnt out, and losing hope.

I don’t think so and I am the 99%.

Get off the couch. Go to a solidarity protest in your city (that site is slow, be patient). If we are all silent, we can’t expect change. We are more powerful together.

The site lists 9,656,435 Male users and 4,455,733 Female users. At a quick glance, I thought wow, a 2 to 1 ratio! My head said, “that’s almost 50%”, and I quickly divided the 9.6 by 4.4 and got ~46%. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

I looked at that number and got excited. Wow, Google managed to even out their numbers in only a month, they really are rock stars with this new social network!

But, something just didn’t sit right. I sent out the article anyway and it was published. My mistake was quickly discovered by a fellow G Plus-er but, not before it got syndicated on the NYtimes.com — which of course, happens to be my favorite paper.

This morning all I can think of is Holly Hunter in Broadcast News. (Sorry, that’s the best clip I can find.) Talk about embarrassing, a mistake on the NYT website.

Could it get worse? Yes! The title of my article was based on that one error. The old title “Google Plus Adds More Women After Mostly-Male Launch”, in the Google Plus world is big news — particularly after a lot of controversy surrounding pseudonyms and how women (particularly bloggers) are directly impacted by Google’s real name policy.

For what it’s worth, my original title was “Google Plus Invites More Women to the Party”. I wrote the article over three weeks ago, in light of Google attending the BlogHer conference giving out 3000 invitations to G+. Honestly, at this point, I am not sure number of women versus men is important. Google is likely, by now, seeing the same feedback recycle over and over.

My point remains the same, regardless of what the ratios are, Google Plus “was presented to its audience for the past two months as an exclusive club — one where the users would help to mold and shape a new social media network through feedback. This personal attention is what people love about Google Plus. It is also why female users feel frustrated Google didn’t take the time to consider who’s opinion they asked for first.”

Ironically enough, I actually like the invitation roll-out method. However, Google could have done a better job at who got those invitations up front. Especially considering the gender ratios of other networks — which is what makes the ratios interesting — the fact that most other networks have significantly more women than men. Linkedin even has 37% women using it’s network. Based on Google’s all encompassing reach however — with games, unlimited character posts, the new +1 features, Picasa’s integration and all of Google Plus’s other features — I think it’s safe to say Google is trying to be far more than a career based networking platform.

Anyways, I am sorry for the confusion I created and the glimmer of excitement that the false headline stirred last night. Certainly one thing is clear, people are still just as excited as ever about diversifying Google Plus. That’s music to my ears.

Now, does anyone want a slice of my humble pie? I have plenty.